Yahoo Beat Google in WHAT, Now?

A report released this week by comScore reported that Yahoo’s sites surpassed Google’s sites as the most visited Web properties in America for the month of July. A lot of news articles related to this topic have been reporting some misleading information, so we just want to get the story straight and explain what this really means for our clients.

FAQ’s:

Question:Are more people using Yahoo than Google now?

Answer: No. Yahoo had more unique visitors than Google for the month of July (Yahoo had 196,564,000 unique visitors beating out Google’s 192,251,000). This report includes other Web properties owned by Yahoo and Google, which could be skewing the results a bit. Yahoo and Microsoft currently have about 30% of the search market. According to Market Watch, Yahoo has always had high traffic numbers, but they continue to lag well behind Google in converting that traffic into revenue.

Question:Does this data include mobile data?

Answer: No, it doesn’t! comScore only looked at people visiting Yahoo’s sites from a desktop or notebook PC, and exclude people using smartphones or other mobile devices. If mobile traffic was included, we would most likely be seeing Google on top.

Question:Should I be doing more to optimize my site for Yahoo?

Answer: It’s definitely a good idea to optimize for the top 3 search engines – Google, Bing and Yahoo. All three algorithms differ, but following our SEO best practices will help you rank for all three search engines. Important factors for all three search engines include: optimized <TITLE> and header tags, quality content including targeted keywords, user friendly website navigation and content that is updated regularly. Bing and Yahoo both have local directories where you should get your business locations listed if you haven’t already. We also recommend signing up for Bing Webmaster Tools and tracking your metrics there as well.

If you have other questions, feel free to leave them in the comments section below!